Disneyland Paris

Since the 1930’s, the Walt Disney Company is known for producing characters, images, as well as stories which have created happiness for audiences around the world. This corporation has grown from a small cartoon studio run by famous Walt and Roy Disney to a million dollar business. In Janet Wasko’s novel, “Understanding Disney”, Wasko explains Disney as corporation calling it “The Disney Empire”. Throughout her novel, Wasko argues that Disney is set up like a typical profit seeking corporation, as well as creates and manufactures fantasy, and lastly re-invents folk tales by “Americanising” them.

Background: The history of Walt Disney, and the Disney Corporation, is one shrouded in admiration and accolades for the accomplishment of the American dream. Walt Disney himself is an icon for the American work ethic, i.e., hard work pays off. He is seen as a Horatio Alger, "rags to riches," success story. Beginning his work in animation in the 1920s, Walt Disney gained fame worldwide for his films and theme parks. But Walt Disney created more than films and theme parks. By infusing them with an ideological stance glorifying "the American way of life," his brand of democracy and conservatism, he created a cultural institution. The moralistic stance of his enterprise became common knowledge and it is said that his 1933 version of Three Little Pigs was the last of his cartoons in which the film’s moral messages were open to interpretation [3]

The case “Euro Disney: First 100 days” talks about the issues faced by the Walt Disney Company when expanding to international borders. The case begins with the history of Disneyland and then describes the reasons behind its success and expansion to various states across the country. It then describes the success of Tokyo Disneyland, first Disney theme park outside America and the factors affecting it.

Euro Disney marketers have recognized a trend. People are going to theme parks during the weekends for adults as well as children entertainment. Indeed, there is an existing need for entertainment of this kind. Therefore, an opportunity exists in the European market that Euro Disney could have taken advantage of.

The ideology of a successful life is forced on citizens from childhood. Cartoons are made by corporations to illustrate how people should act in society and set standards on “the way to live”. Mickey Mouse is an example of this because he has transformed into the pleasant face of all of Disney has branched into the lives of so many children around the world, bringing them cheer and joy in the comfort of their homes. These ideals are stored and used to comprehend every other social conformity from childhood to adulthood. Even R.O. Dent resonates with the happiness felt by the many children of the world and thinks of Mickey as an innocent mouse

For most of society, the word Disney elicits warm feelings: memories of early Saturday mornings with family watching cartoons, family trips to Disney World, or a movie that was so encapsulating it was watched over and over again. Disney achieves a high level of regard from most of society unparalleled by other companies. Penn State education professor, Henry A. Giroux, accompanied by Grace Pollock, argues in his book The Mouse That Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence that society is blinded by Disney’s façade of “childhood innocence” and that Disney’s marketing tactics are far from innocent at all.

You probably can’t find anyone on the seven continents in the civilized world who has not heard the word Disney. No other person in the world has played both to, and with so many people’s imagination. Both young and old admire what Walter Disney accomplished in his lifetime.

The Walt Disney Company has seen their share of success in taking their parks and resorts into global markets. “60 years ago, the first Disney theme park opened, in California and was the brainchild of Walt Disney himself, who was motivated by the lack of entertainment options available to him and his two young daughters.” (Forbes, 2016). Disneyland California penetrated the market rapidly, and its popularity led to the opening of Disney World in Florida, followed by global expansion in Tokyo, Paris, and Hong Kong. Their latest expansion came in June 2016, on a 963 acres’ site in Shanghai, China (Xu, 2012). After one year in operation, Shanghai Disneyland is outpacing their most optimistic projections, and the park’s

He described a term that he referred to as “Disneyfication”, which he defined as “an idea of taking an environment and creating a fantasy world out of it by sanitizing it and making it devoid of any sort of impurity, Disney as a corporation tries to do that, and it affects children” (Stereotypes, 2013). While their parents are off running errands, or working their children rush home from school and turn on the T.V. to their favorite Disney channel movies, and get lost in the fantasy world of Walt Disney where all things can happen, characters are shown ideally and therefore unrealistically and there is always a happy ending.

The first Disneyland outside the US was opened in April 1983 in Tokyo. Disney took a

In the early 1960s, Walt Disney wanted to give the residents of Eastern United States the opportunity to enjoy the entertainment that was being offered at his California’s Disneyland theme park. Walt and his team the WED Enterprises settled on picking Florida as the new parks location. Florida offered weather that was similar year round, and was already the number one location for tourism. The announcement of the idea was delivered on November 16, 1965 at an Orlando press conference.

Culturally, Disney cannot force itself on another people, which in this case was the whole of the European continent. Disney promoted its product, the theme park, similar to that of Tokyo Disneyland believing Europe wanted their piece of “Americana”.

Walt Disney Company had always been successfully operating theme park until 1992. Starting in 1955 where the first Disneyland set its foot at Anaheim, California and in 1983 in Florida (Hill, 2000). While in 1983, Disney faced a true challenge as they opened the first international Disneyland in Tokyo. In a fear of wide cultural differences between American and Japanese, it turned out an unexpected massive successful Tokyo Disneyland. As a result, Disney did not hesitate to invest a big sum of money for Euro Disney in Paris.

Walter Elias "Walt" Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an American entrepreneur, cartoonist,animator, voice actor, and film producer. He and his staff created numerous famous fictional characters including Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy. These cartoon characters became so famous that he designed theme park for the entertainment of children and family in U.S.A. Disney then thought to spread the theme parks around the world. Therefore Disney theme parks were opened first in Tokyo, Japan called "Disney Resort" which became sucuessful by luck. The second theme park was opened in Paris called " Disneyland Paris” which became unsuccessful because of the cultural differences between U.S and Paris. Keeping this problem in mind, Disney opened third theme park in Hong Kong called Hong Kond Disneyland which became successful.

Hong Kong Disneyland was opened in September 2005 through a joint venture between the Walt Disney International and Hong Kong government. Disney has been on an international expansion since it first opened its park in 1980 in Japan and China being the most lucrative market, Disney decided to open the park in Hong Kong after selecting the city in the bidding process. The park was the first American park in Chinese territory.